]]>On November 14, R&E invited students and tutors from New York Avenue Presbyterian Church’s after-school tutoring program, Community Club, to recite the Gettysburg Address in honor of its 150th anniversary. The club meets at the church every week and provides dinner, academic tutoring, and mentorship to DC students ranging in age from 5 to 18. New York Avenue Presbyterian is also the church where President Lincoln rented a pew and sometimes attended services. The Gettysburg Address, described by historians as “the sacred scripture of the Civil War’s innermost spiritual meaning,” was delivered at Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863. Produced and edited by Fred Yi and Missy Daniel with R&E interns Sarah Trager and Lindsey Rubinstein.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2013/11/27/gettysburg-address-150th-anniversary/21174/feed/1Abraham Lincoln,American Civil War,Gettysburg,New York Avenue Presbyterian,sacred space,soldiersAt New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, where Lincoln rented a pew and attended services, tutors and students recite the brief but eloquent speech that has come to be regarded as quite mystical in meaning. It puts forward both a language of responsibil...At New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, where Lincoln rented a pew and attended services, tutors and students recite the brief but eloquent speech that has come to be regarded as quite mystical in meaning. It puts forward both a language of responsibility and a moral vision of new life for the nation.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno1:57 Godless Chaplainshttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/04/20/april-20-2012-godless-chaplains/10814/
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LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: It was only fitting that the first parachutist out of the plane at this festival for atheists and non-believers at Fort Bragg is herself an atheist—Sergeant Rachel Medley.

SERGEANT RACHEL MEDLEY: I am an atheist and I’m a good person—have, you know, a great life and have great friends, and my service to my country is based on my personal morals which are help other people, be kinds to others, treat others as you would like to be treated.

SEVERSON: She would like to be treated with more respect, as would many of the troops attending this first ever event expressly for soldiers who don’t believe in God. Sergeant Justin Griffith was one of the organizers.

SERGEANT JUSTIN GRIFFITH: This is us coming out of the closet, you know, shattering that stained glass ceiling. We want to remove the stigma about atheists and whatever they think the word “atheist” means.

SEVERSON: As unlikely as it may seem, one token of respect they would like is an atheist chaplain. That’s a tall order considering that conservative evangelical clergy dominate the ranks of the chaplaincy. Organizations like the National Association of Evangelicals, the NAE, dispute any need for an atheist chaplain. Galen Carey is an NAE vice president.

GALEN CAREY: Well, evangelicals very strongly supported the men and women in uniform, and they want to see that their spiritual needs are met. I don’t think you would find many who could understand, frankly, the point of a chaplain for atheists.

SEVERSON: There are over 3000 chaplains all together. Ninety percent are Christian, even though only about 7 out of 10 soldiers claim to be Christian. There are also a handful of Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu chaplains. Jason Torpy, an Iraq veteran, wants to know why the much larger group of atheists or humanists, estimated to be about 40,000 soldiers, don’t have their own chaplain.

JASON TORPY: They have trainings for the Jewish perspective and Eastern Orthodox perspective and the Christian Science perspective even though, you know, our group—even just the atheists, not even the general nontheists, you know—even though we dwarf their numbers.

SEVERSON: Torpy is a graduate of West Point. He was a captain in the 1st Armored Division and is now the president of the Military Association of Atheists and Free Thinkers.

TORPY: If I’m atheist or humanist, where’s that support for us? The same reason that a Christian will benefit from that and a Muslim will benefit from that and be a better soldier if they’re affirmed, and they can grow on their values, and they can plug into their community. we will benefit from that as well, but we can’t right now because the chaplains either are ignorant of or hostile to nontheistic beliefs.

SEVERSON: Our request for an interview with the Department of Defense was declined. Instead, we were given a statement reiterating the Pentagon’s longstanding position. It reads in part, “Anyone wanting to become a chaplain must have an endorsement from a qualified religious organization.” For the Department of Defense it is a sensitive issue, with pressure building from atheist groups around the country accusing the military of promoting Christianity. But Colonel Stephen Sicinski, the Fort Bragg base commander, would deny that.

COLONEL STEPHEN SICINSKI: I don’t see there being any inequality today. I’m not tracking as to where you might think that there is inequality of treatment. We don’t treat soldiers that are atheists as atheists. We treat them as soldiers.

SEVERSON: In 2010, Colonel Sicinski, at the urging of base chaplains, approved and supported a Billy Graham Evangelistic Association event called Rock the Fort to boost morale and, in the colonel’s words, “bolster the faith.”

GRIFFITH: We were “treated” to a just massive festival, and they were actually very successful. They converted hundreds of soldiers onstage.

SEVERSON: And when Sergeant Griffith asked for a similar event for atheists and humanists, Colonel Sicinski declined at first. Months later he changed his mind, and that set the stage for this event called Rock Beyond Belief. The keynote speaker was the British biologist and famous atheist author Richard Dawkins.

RICHARD DAWKINS: I’m delighted that a barrier has been broken through, that there never again can be a religious rally on a military base without the authorities knowing that it will be followed by something like this.

SICINSKI: This is just a manifestation, the latest manifestation of our attempt to ensure that a segment of our population gets the type of equal consideration that other types or segments of the population would.

SEVERSON: Prior to this event the military announced that there would be no base chaplains available for interviews. One chaplain wrote an open letter on Fort Bragg’s Facebook page saying the secular festival would promote and glorify violence against people who possess a faith in God. There was no violence at the Rock Beyond Belief event. Sergeant Griffith, who was a passionate Christian in his teens and now wears dog tags that say he is an atheist, claims that he’s had death threats.

GRIFFITH: I get death threats on a regular basis claiming that I‘m going to burn down the chapel, and that’s not the case at all. In fact, we want to use the churches. We want to be a part of the community.

SEVERSON: Among atheists, one of the most objectionable tests they are required to pass involves their spiritual fitness. It’s a new test given annually. Sergeant Griffith failed.

GRIFFITH: It went on and on telling me that I need to improve my spiritual fitness. But if I need help, I call this 1-800 number. So I called that 1-800 number, and I was basically just going to yell at whoever it was, and to my surprise this was a suicide hotline. I was told that I was suicidal because I was not religious.

SEVERSON: Atheists contend it’s difficult to advance in the army if a soldier isn’t deemed spiritually fit.

GRIFFITH: I take this test again and again and again, because every three months since I failed a section, the spiritual portion, that means I’m red and I have to take it again in three months. It’s offensive in the highest. It’s illegal. it’s unconstitutional, it’s a waste of money, and it’s another tool to keep us down, to tell us atheists that we’re freaks or somehow unfit.

CAREY: It’s in the military’s interest as well as the individual service member’s interest that their spiritual needs are met, but I don’t think that anyone is being discriminated against in the military because of absence of having a spiritual affiliation.

SEVERSON: Jason Torpy says the discrimination is often subtle, but it’s ever-present and, he says, it’s misplaced because, he argues, atheists are making a greater sacrifice.

TORPY: Not only am I here serving my country, expanding the value, you know, liberty, protecting and defending Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. This is even more valuable because I’m giving the one life, you know, and when I die I don’t go to heaven.

DAWKINS: I must say if I were in a fox hole in the heat of battle I’d much rather be with an atheist solder than with a soldier who believed that some kind of supernatural being was watching over him. I’d want a soldier who knew that it was his own wit and bravery keeping us safe.

SEVERSON: Galen Carey with the National Association of Evangelicals says if atheists and humanists need someone to talk to, to receive counsel from, there may be another way.

CAREY; Well, there are times when psychologists, psychiatrists, other counselors are needed. That’s not exactly the role of a chaplain, so if we need to have more psychiatrists, then sure, we should bring them in. But that doesn’t mean we need to have chaplains.

SEVERSON: Atheists argue that going to a psychiatrist, for whatever reason, is often interpreted as a negative on a soldier’s record.

TORPY: Chaplains have unfettered access to troops and they have clergy confidentiality. If you go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist within the military it goes on your official record, which can jeopardize your job.

MEDLEY: It’s just like anything else. Anything that’s different or newer than other ideas is always met with a little bit of trepidation by people. That’s human nature. In the sixties we were having the same conversation about people with different colored skin, so it’s not a new conversation. It’s just a new subject.

SEVERSON: It’s a conversation that will likely go on for some time, but for those who share the goals of people here, there are signs of incremental progress in their campaign for equality with religious denominations. This festival is one sign.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Washington.

/wnet/religionandethics/files/2012/04/thumb01-godlesschaplains.jpg“We don’t treat soldiers that are atheists as atheists. We treat them as soldiers,” says Colonel Stephen Sicinski, base commander at Fort Bragg. But Captain Jason Torpy says army chaplains are “either ignorant of or hostile to nontheistic beliefs.”

BOB ABERNETHY: The last of the U.S. troops in Iraq came home last month, and we want to explore today how they are being received. Are they getting the help they need? How do they feel about the violence in the country they left behind? Meanwhile, what can be said about the incident in Afghanistan when four Marines defiled the bodies of Taliban fighters, and the picture of that went online around the world? Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program, joins me to talk with Nancy Sherman, a University Professor at Georgetown University in Washington. Her specialty is the ethics of war, including what she has called “moral wounding.” Her most recent book is The Untold War. Nancy, thank you for being with us.

ABERNETHY: When people see the pictures of the Marine incident, everybody says that’s terrible, reprehensible, no excuse for it. But, you know, here are guys who may have been on several tours, they’re tired, they see their friends, their buddies, blown up, killed, maimed. It would seem to me a fairly natural reaction to demonize the enemy, hate the enemy and want to do something despicable to express your feelings about this enemy.

SHERMAN: You’re right. The angry responses increased as the weapons have gotten dirtier and the enemies more invisible, and the rules of engagement have clamped down, and so there is a lot of frustration and, as you say, lots of deaths and maimings, and if you can’t exercise your frustration at the living you may do it toward the dead. That said, officers are furious that there was this kind of misconduct, this lack of professionalism, and a sense of not really having compassion for the respect due for the dead.

KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly): Nancy, we’ve seen in the news this past week, but over successive weeks, ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq between Sunnis and Shiites, tensions in the government. How does all of this contribute to this notion you talk about, the moral wounding of those troops who served there?

SHERMAN: Well, I think troops have been on a roller coaster these ten years, especially in Iraq. They were exhilarated with the fall of Baghdad, frustrated with not finding WMDs, ambivalent about a mission, and reluctantly took on the role of being city builders, city planners, school builders, and the like. And now they see that whole project of stability and democratization unraveling, and they feel, I think, frustration. You know, some come home, their marriages have exploded, they’ve lost custody of the children. They come home carrying heavy, invisible wounds, of a sense of betrayal and PTSD. That’s hard. Was it worth it?

LAWTON: Was it worth it?

ABERNETHY: A sense of their having carried the whole burden and the whole rest of the country not having done so?

SHERMAN: That’s right. They are a volunteer force, but they’re still only, you know, one percent or fewer than the country, and that makes them a kind of isolated group.

ABERNETHY: But they are getting the medical care they need.

SHERMAN: Well, yes, they are getting medical care. It’s better than ever, but it’s massive, and we’re in the process of DOD budgetary constraints. We have to make sure that at primary care they get psychological screening, and that it carries through to the end of their days.

LAWTON: Is there an ethical obligation, a moral obligation we as a society have toward these troops?

SHERMAN: Absolutely, absolutely. They may come home with a sense of resentment because they carried so much. We have to reach out through community organizations, creation of jobs, and simply talking to the vet who comes home.

ABERNETHY: Is that hard to do?

SHERMAN: Yeah, but first thing to do, no judging and a lot of empathy, because it could have been your son or daughter, and it probably is your neighbor.

LAWTON: And is that happening? Do the troops feel that that is happening enough?

SHERMAN: More and more, but don’t be surprised if when you say, “Thank you for your service,” you get a mixed response.

ABERNETHY: Really?

SHERMAN: They want you to know it was harder than just your utterance of that remark.

ABERNETHY: Nancy Sherman of Georgetown University, many thanks.

SHERMAN: Thank you so much.

ABERNETHY: And Kim Lawton of this program. Thank you.

After 10 years of war, says Georgetown University professor Nancy Sherman, US troops are coming home from Iraq, “and now they see that whole project of stability and democratization unraveling. They come home carrying heavy, invisible wounds, of a sense of betrayal and PTSD. Was it worth it?”/wnet/religionandethics/files/2012/01/thumb01-nancysherman.jpg

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/01/20/january-20-2012-living-with-the-moral-burdens-of-war/10152/feed/1caregiving,Iraq,moral wound,Nancy Sherman,PTSD,soldiers,veterans,WarAfter ten years of war, says Georgetown University ethics professor Nancy Sherman, US troops are coming home from Iraq, “and now they see that whole project of stability and democratization unraveling. They come home carrying heavy invisible wounds,After ten years of war, says Georgetown University ethics professor Nancy Sherman, US troops are coming home from Iraq, “and now they see that whole project of stability and democratization unraveling. They come home carrying heavy invisible wounds, of a sense of betrayal and PTSD. Was it worth it?”Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno4:34 Chaplain Burnouthttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/11/11/november-11-2011-chaplain-burnout/9903/
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CHAPLAIN STEVEN RINDAHL: The month of May, we sustained our largest volume of casualties. We were conducting memorial ceremonies every few days, and by the time that month was over, I was pretty well worn out.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Chaplain Steven Rindahl served 15 months in Iraq. Now he’s the chaplain at the Fort Jackson hospital in South Carolina, which is also the headquarters of the Army’s Chaplain school. There are 2900 full and part-time chaplains, and many have served at least one tour of duty in a combat zone, and, like Chaplain Rindahl, been haunted by the experience.

CHAPLAIN RINDAHL: We have 17 of our soldiers killed and one of our contracted interpreters, and I did not keep count of how many traumatic amputations and other wounds that caused our people to be evacuated from theater.

SEVERSON: It was his fellow chaplains who took him aside and told him that he was suffering from what has become known as “compassion fatigue.”

CHAPLAIN RINDAHL: I realized that what they were saying was true because I would hear footsteps outside in the gravel, the crunching noise, and I would just be terrified that somebody was coming to tell me about another casualty.

CHAPLAIN MIKE DUGAL: Across the board we have recognized that we do have chaplains that have experienced combat trauma.

SEVERSON: Colonel Mike Dugal is the Chaplain Director for the Center for Spiritual Leadership at Ft. Jackson. The center opened in 2008 partly in response to the realization that, like soldiers, chaplains also suffer the trauma of combat stress.

CHAPLAIN DUGAL: We do have chaplains that are going through the same psychological and traumatic events that our soldiers are going through. It is hard to be empathetic and to show compassion to our soldiers and to see the brokenness, to see the carnage and that not to affect you.

SEVERSON: According to the army, since the beginning of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s chaplains have served a total of more than 20,000 months in combat zones, some have gone on as many as eight tours of duty. One survey revealed that 20 percent of these chaplains had suffered compassion fatigue or some sort of PTSD.

Like the soldiers, these chaplains are often in the heat of battle where death is very real and the casualties are friends. Lieutenant Colonel Graeme Bicknell is not a chaplain, but he is an army expert on compassion fatigue.

LT. COL GRAEME BICKNELL: It can be nightmares. It can be lack of desire to eat, sort of feeling sad, sadness, avoiding certain behaviors because it reminds you of what happened.

LT. COL BICKNELL: The more empathic a person is, the more they’re able to relate to somebody or be in their shoes. The more vulnerable they are to compassion fatigue. And I think that with chaplains, that empathic relationship is incredibly important to be able to benefit the soldier.

CHAPLAIN JOHN READ: I guess I first learned in a profound way how trauma can damage the soul when I was clinically trained at Brook Army Medical Center.

SEVERSON: Chaplain John Read is the army’s Director of the Soldier and Family Ministries.

CHAPLAIN READ: You see the gun shot wounds, the stabbings, the burn patients, all the volatility of the kinds of things you see in a war zone. I mean I recognized there, as a clinically trained chaplain working in a hospital setting how that would affect me in terms of questions of life, death, grief, loss. The things that profoundly become kind of moral, ethical, spiritual aspects of our lives.

SEVERSON: He tells of seeing the body parts of 38 little Iraqi kids blown up by a terrorist bomb right after learning he had just become a grandfather. And of the soldier who died in his arms.

CHAPLAIN READ: He had just become a naturalized citizen two months before his death, killed in a rocket attack. I held him in my arms as he died and gave him, recited a prayer from his specific faith that he was from, and the peaceful look on his face as he thanked me and died, I will just never forget. But there isn’t a day that I don’t wish that he could somehow be with his wife and kids.

SEVERSON: One thing that often comes through is the deep, abiding respect and fatherly love these chaplains have for their soldiers.

CHAPLAIN DUGAL: It is natural for chaplains to weep with those who weep because a lot of these kids, most of these kids are the age of my youngest son and I’m a father to them. There are times that when I reflect about the cost that our military has paid since 911, I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to be with them. Because it is an honor.

SEVERSON: And it is not only the soldiers chaplains weep for — it’s the soldier’s families.

CHAPLAIN READ: The chaplains that go out and do many notifications, supporting the casualty notification process and the death notifications. It’s a heavy load to bear. And so at some point in time, invariably they have to re-engage themselves in a meaningful way to move in and through and beyond that.

SEVERSON: That’s where the chaplain’s school and the Center for Spiritual Leadership come into play. They get training here, discussion groups, reading lists, counseling.

There’s a chaplain museum tracing back to the Revolutionary war. It was George Washington who first dictated that each regiment should have it’s own chaplain.

CHAPLAIN DUGAL: When pain and suffering is very real, soldiers know that they can turn to the chaplain.

SEVERSON: Chaplain Greg Cheney served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He says there was a time when what he experienced in combat challenged his faith.

CHAPLAIN GREG CHENEY: Definitely, I mean when you go through that kind of extreme circumstances, there were times when I would, you know, question God and ask God what’s going on. Yeah, it’s one of those experiences where everything doesn’t make sense when it’s happening.

SEVERSON: Ultimately, he says, his faith actually grew from his combat experience.

CHAPLAIN CHENEY: Even when I was going through that, I felt an amazing sense of calm in those situations as I ministered to those soldiers, and I know that that could not have been anything from myself, it was only God, you know, Jesus Christ working through me to touch these soldier’s lives.

CHAPLAIN DUGAL: I would definitely say that my faith has developed and not to the point of questioning the existence of God, but having to deal with the reality of pain and suffering and realize that there are no just simple answers.

CHAPLAIN RINDAHL: If you think about what Christ did for humanity. He left a place of ultimate privilege in order to take on a hardship and ultimately sacrifice himself for people who didn’t know him. And soldiers take upon themselves the obligation to leave the most privileged county in the world and be willing to sacrifice personal comfort and, although not intending to sacrifice their own life, at least be willing to.

SEVERSON: There’s a phrase that’s become quite common among veterans, and among chaplains, of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It’s called “the new normal.” It means that their lives are never going to be quite the same as before.

CHAPLAIN READ: Sunday school teachers I had had as a kid growing up who kind of always celebrated my journey, said you’re not the same. And I would say, reflectively, how am I different? Well, you’ve seen things that none of us will ever see. We can see that in your eyes.

Some chaplains have seen and ministered to so many dying or badly wounded soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan they themselves have become casualties./wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/11/promo1511-thumb.jpg

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/11/11/november-11-2011-chaplain-burnout/9903/feed/13Afghanistan,Christianity,compassion fatigue,Iraq,Military Chaplains,post-traumatic stress disorder,soldiers,veterans,WarSome chaplains have seen and ministered to so many dying or badly wounded soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan they themselves have become casualties.Some chaplains have seen and ministered to so many dying or badly wounded soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan they themselves have become casualties.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno8:04 Moral Wounds of Warhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/11/may-28-2010-moral-wounds-of-war/6367/
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LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Happy days in Roswell, New Mexico, as soldiers in a National Guard engineer company deployed in Afghanistan come marching home. For some, unless they get called back the war is over. For others, it’s only begun.

MICHAEL ABBATELLO: I was a rifleman.

SEVERSON: In an infantry unit?

ABBATELLO: In an infantry line unit.

SEVERSON: In the Marines?

ABBATELLO: Correct, Marine Corps infantry.

SEVERSON: Michael Abbatello joined the Marines September 12, 2001, the day after the terrorist attack on the Twin Trade Towers. Like tens of thousands of American soldiers coming home, he has struggled with the warning signs of post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, symptoms like nightmares, insomnia, hyper-vigilance and guilt, and for him something even deeper—a wounding of the soul.

ABBATELLO: Something is changed. You know, you feel down to your spirit. You know that you’re different now. You know, we don’t really have a consciousness of our own spirit until it’s wounded, and then it needs help.

SEVERSON: With the increase in crime and suicide among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, the notion that war can actually damage or warp the soul has been gaining traction among experts in the field. Nancy Sherman, a professor at Georgetown University, has studied and written extensively about the hearts, minds, and souls of soldiers.

PROFESSOR NANCY SHERMAN (Georgetown University): I like to talk about the moral emotions of war, and they include wounds, but they’re the hard, bad feelings that may erode at your character. That’s the really deep ones.

SEVERSON: The kind of emotional wounds Lieutenant Colonel Eric Olsen witnessed as a chaplain in Iraq.

LT. COL. ERIC OLSEN: It’s a hard place where you are asked to do some very difficult things, and once you’ve crossed those lines it’s hard to navigate back. It is a soul wound. It’s definitely a soul wound.

SEVERSON: Michael Abbatello is still suffering from the guilt that his unit wasn’t there to protect an Afghan father who had provided intelligence on the enemy to the Marines.

ABBATELLO: He had trusted us to some degree that we would be there to support him and his family if he was going to be taking chances to help us, and we betrayed his trust. I mean to a certain degree we weren’t there for him. So yeah, I have guilt.

SEVERSON: What happened to him?

ABBATELLO: Him and his family were gunned down in front of their house. His beard was cut off. He was stripped and laid on top of his family.

SEVERSON: You knew the kids, too? The kids, the whole family?

ABBATELLO: Yeah, yeah.

SEVERSON: A recent survey by the Rand Corporation found that over 300,000 veterans are suffering from some form of PTSD, which has put enormous pressure on veterans’ hospitals like this one in Los Angeles, which also houses New Directions, a residential treatment program for veterans. Clinical director Monica Martocci says no one knows the number of PTSD victims for certain because many veterans refuse to acknowledge it.

MONICA MARTOCCI (Clinical Director, New Directions): It doesn’t bode well for their career if they’re in any way seen as mentally unstable.

SEVERSON: Those who have studied the issue say moral wounding is especially prevalent among recent vets because so many have served more than one tour of duty. Ed Tick operates a sanctuary called Soldier’s Heart for stricken veterans and says they aren’t the only ones suffering.

DR. EDWARD TICK: Twenty percent of active duty troops and as much as 40 percent of Guards and National Guardsmen and reservists are coming back with PTSD. These are astronomical numbers, and we could go through substance abuse and divorce and child abuse and homicide and imprisoned populations, so they are really hurting.

SEVERSON: The Justice Department estimates that nearly a quarter-million veterans of wars dating back to Vietnam are serving time behind bars. The New York Times found 121 cases in which Iraq and Afghan veterans committed murder after their return from war. Only a few had been screened for mental health problems, and unlike many civilian criminals, the overwhelming majority had no prior criminal record.

Dr. Jonathan Shay, a neuroscientist who works with the Veterans Administration, ridicules the age-old theory that good breeding and good character will keep you morally strong even in the face of war.

DR. JONATHAN SHAY: Well, that idea has a great pedigree, and I’m afraid it’s complete crap. It is simply wrong. Moral injury causes good character to become deformed.

SEVERSON: It alters it? It changes who you are?

SHAY: It alters it. It makes you bitter. It makes you cynical. It makes you filled with hatred.

SEVERSON: Michael Abbatello had never been in trouble before, but he served time in prison after his wife convinced him to sell all his unregistered civilian guns to someone who turned out to be a government informer.

ABBATELLO: You get so used to having a rifle. You know, I used to get these fears like I had forgotten my rifle somewhere, and to even imagine life without a rifle is scary.

MARTOCCI: That’s what they were trained to do and what they learned, especially in combat, is that the world is not a safe place, and they are taught to protect themselves and others so, I mean, they think everyone else is crazy for not having a weapon with them at all times.

SEVERSON: The rate of suicide among vets of the current wars has also been on the rise. A federal study in 2005 found that veterans were twice as likely to commit suicide as those who hadn’t served in the military, and PTSD is considered a significant reason why almost 25 percent of America’s homeless are veterans of all wars, even though they make up only eight percent of the population. The largest number of homeless vets reside in downtown Los Angeles, and many have found help at the venerable Union Rescue Mission.

SEVERSON: Anthony Ortega now works at Union Mission. He was injured by shrapnel while his National Guard unit was in Afghanistan, found this place after living on the streets. When he got home, badly injured, Anthony fell into drugs and onto the street.

ANTHONY ORTEGA: And then doing some of the things we have to do, as far as serving our country, goes against what’s in the Bible. Coming back, having to deal with that was very difficult.

SEVERSON: Billy Zinnerman was a sergeant major in the Marines. He says the first Gulf War, where he served on reconnaissance patrols, changed him spiritually.

BILLY ZINNERMAN: Without a doubt, because you see no spirituality in war. Combat does not, for lack of a better word, expose you to the opportunity to serve the Lord.

SEVERSON: After he lost his faith, he lost his wife and his home, and now he’s trying to help other veterans at the Los Angeles mission.

ZINNERMAN: I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a position to say to yourself, if you have believed in God you think God has abandoned you. That’s what you feel in combat, because you feel there can be no God with this type of carnage going on.

SEVERSON: Everyone we spoke with agrees that an important factor in the turbulent return of some vets is that much of the country has not shared the pain of the two wars they have been fighting.

SHERMAN: There’s lip service to the service and to saluting the service, but does the public really understand in a deep way, empathetically, what the moral burdens of war are? I don’t think so.

SEVERSON: The good news is the Department of Defense has instituted a reintegration plan for returning vets called the Yellow Ribbon Program. Chaplain Eric Olsen officiated at this one.

OLSEN: We try to see them as soon as they come home and in 30 days and 60 days, and we bring them together and sort of tell them what they’re going to go through.

SEVERSON: And more churches are joining in, like the Unitarian church here in Albany, New York, which recently sponsored it’s first healing circle ceremony for veterans like Michael Abbatello.

ABBATELLO: I’ve lost more friends to suicides then I did in combat.

SEVERSON: For too many veterans, coming home doesn’t end with kisses and hugs. Now there is an increasing awareness and some say an urgent need for America and Americans to step up and share the pain of our returning veterans and help them reclaim their lives.

“Does the public really understand in a deep way what the moral burdens of war are? I don’t think so,” says philosopher, ethicist, and psychoanalyst Nancy Sherman./wnet/religionandethics/files/2010/05/thumb-moralwoundsofwar.jpg

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/11/may-28-2010-moral-wounds-of-war/6367/feed/10Afghanistan,combat,Ed Tick,guilt,Iraq,Johnathan Shay,mental health,military,Nancy Sherman,National Guard,post-traumatic stress disorder,soldiers"Does the public really understand in a deep way what the moral burdens of war are? I don't think so," says philosopher, ethicist, and psychoanalyst Nancy Sherman."Does the public really understand in a deep way what the moral burdens of war are? I don't think so," says philosopher, ethicist, and psychoanalyst Nancy Sherman.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno9:48 Sharing the Burden of Warhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/11/may-28-2010-sharing-the-burden-of-war/6368/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/11/may-28-2010-sharing-the-burden-of-war/6368/#commentsFri, 11 Mar 2011 20:59:14 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=6368More →

In 1998, I drove by a billboard for the recently released movie “The Thin Red Line,” one of those rare films that are both intensely graphic and introspective. To convey the movie’s central theme, the billboard included the longer subtitle from the James Jones novel: “Every man fights his own war.” “Ah,” I said to myself, having only just seen the film. “Now I get it.”

I thought of that moment recently as I was reading Nancy Sherman’s new book, The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of our Soldiers. Sherman, a philosopher and psychoanalyst, provides a window into the complicated inner moral struggles of the individual soldier and sheds light on the tapestry of individual wartime experience. As she explains, every person’s experience is unique. Therefore philosophy, with its thousands of years of nuanced discussion, is better suited to address moral conflicts than psychology. Indeed, Sherman argues, it is philosophy’s very complexity that can be so healing.

This is an important distinction. For its part, the Department of Defense has made considerable progress acknowledging the psychological burden on its returning warriors. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its less severe manifestation, combat stress, have been discussed extensively in public forums, and service members are now encouraged to receive counseling without jeopardizing their own careers. This is an important and very positive step.

But the approach to wartime psychology is still a pathological one: “You are mentally broken, and we care about you, so we want to fix you.” It has a one-size-fits-all feel. The problem is more complicated than that. From my own observations of combat, the individual soldier often feels not that he or she is broken, but that the world itself is broken, and there is no easy fix for a broken world. Philosophy, at the least, offers a framework in which to understand it.

I have experienced this disorientation myself. Not long after returning from my second deployment to Afghanistan in as many years, I found myself in the checkout aisle of a Home Depot. The cashier noticed my military ID when I opened my wallet to pay, and he awkwardly informed me that I warranted a 10 percent discount. After ringing up the sale and handing me my receipt he added, “And, um, thank you for your service.”

I was confused by that exchange. It’s not that I don’t like the 10 percent discount (because I do), nor that I didn’t appreciate his intentions. It’s just that after enduring significant time apart from my family and fighting in a messy war with no clear protagonists, I expect a little more civic burden-sharing. While my squadron and I had been busy battling the Taliban and Al Qaeda, after all, Wall Street apparently had been on a drunken bender of sub-prime loans and mortgage derivatives that nearly catapulted the nation into a second Great Depression. Meanwhile, the bills for the war—not insignificant by any measure—were simply being charged to our children. Where was the shared sacrifice? Was the nation’s role in the war only to give me a 10 percent discount at Home Depot—and an obligatory pat on the head?

This relationship between the military and the nation, and especially the confusion and misunderstanding on both sides, is an important issue that Sherman discusses extensively. For my part, I have long felt that the inflated words used to describe servicemembers—from “hero” to “great American”—almost always miss their target. Hyperbole sacrifices credibility. But there is still ample common ground on which to begin a more productive conversation. For instance, I always understood my role fighting the nation’s enemies, but it was very difficult for me to reconcile that with the role of being a father to my two sons, if only because the former meant I was always gone. To whom was my true loyalty? I remember in particular a long-distance conversation from Afghanistan with my then three-year-old who had been lured reluctantly to the phone. I tried to draw him out of his shell with light-hearted banter, but he cut me short with the only words he knew to express his longing for an absent father. “You’re taking too long, Daddy,” he whispered. “I know, buddy,” I whispered back, my voice unsteady now. “I know.”

Perhaps here lies the kernel of mutual understanding. A father’s absence from his children is just one example of a deeper, sometimes all-pervasive sense of guilt about the inability to live up to competing standards. The military, of course, is all about standards, and sometimes they are irreconcilable. This guilt—and its mirror image, resentment—are common themes in Sherman’s book, but they are also emotions that are familiar to virtually all working parents who find themselves falling short in some capacity. It is part of the shared humanity of adulthood. In combat, I was surprised to learn from trained psychologists that the psychological effects of frequent long deployments are similar to those of a single traumatic incident, and I have often looked at exhausted civilian counterparts, trying unsuccessfully to adequately balance work, children, and relationships, through the same lens that I viewed my own sailors. We are all, it would seem, fighting our own internal wars.

This is not to say that going to war is just like having a bad hair day. But the core moral struggles on both sides are still recognizable. We service members and civilians are more alike than we may seem. The mismatch between ideals and reality, whether as a result of our inability to live up to expectations or the world’s inability to live up to our own, is devastating stuff. By shining the light of philosophy on a generation of soldiers, Sherman has initiated a dialogue that will help the military—and the nation—better understand their common struggle and, hopefully, better share the burden. It is a dialogue that is long overdue.

US Navy Commander Greg Parker completed multiple tours on four different aircraft carriers and commanded a squadron deployed to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. In 2010, he was a Federal Executive Fellow with the 21st Century Defense Initiative, a research project at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.

“The individual soldier often feels not that he or she is broken, but that the world itself is broken, and there is no easy fix for a broken world,” writes US Navy Commander Greg Parker./wnet/religionandethics/files/2010/05/thumb02-sharingburden.jpg

]]>“Whether we’re actually preserving veterans’ capacity to have a flourishing life after war, a good life for a human being after war, I don’t know. I just don’t know,” says clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay.

“Whether we’re actually preserving veterans’ capacity to have a flourishing life after war, a good life for a human being after war, I don’t know. I just don’t know,” says clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay./wnet/religionandethics/files/2010/05/shay-200×100.jpg

]]>“Soldiers carry all the moral weight of war, and we carry very little, and we need to share that moral burden by realizing that they are our surrogates,” says philosopher, ethicist, and psychoanalyst Nancy Sherman, author of “The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers.”

“Soldiers carry all the moral weight of war, and we carry very little, and we need to share that moral burden by realizing that they are our surrogates,” says the author of “The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers.”/wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/03/thumb0a-nancysherman.jpg

]]>“To do the war on the cheap and not hold us all accountable for the decisions that are made is a travesty,” says this New York National Guard state chaplain.

“To do the war on the cheap and not hold us all accountable for the decisions that are made is a travesty,” says this New York National Guard state chaplain./wnet/religionandethics/files/2010/05/olsen-200×100.jpg

]]>“It’s like you don’t really know your spirit until it’s been damaged. We don’t really have a consciousness of our own spirit until it’s wounded, and then it needs help,” says Michael Abbatello, who served in Afghanistan as a rifleman in a Marine Corps infantry line unit.

“It’s like you don’t really know your spirit until it’s been damaged. We don’t really have a consciousness of our own spirit until it’s wounded, and then it needs help,” says Michael Abbatello, who served in Afghanistan as a rifleman in a Marine Corps infantry line unit./wnet/religionandethics/files/2010/05/abbatello-200×100.jpg